The 2017 Nissan Leaf will carry far more battery power

Even though Leaf’s sales all around the world dropped significantly, the company doesn’t intend to give up.

Engineers from Nisan Motor Corporation work crazy hours to create a more capable vehicle that will be so much better than the previous model of Nissan Leaf – it has been said that the 2017 Nissan Leaf would get far more battery power, allowing for a full-charge driving range of close to 300 miles (482 kilometers).

Also, the company intends to make the vehicle lighter by using carbon fiber components. Such a bold move will permit hands-free recharging, allowing Leaf drivers to park over an inductive system floor mat that does the charging automatically.

Are you impressed?

Well, that’s not everything.

Since all automakers are into autonomous driving technology, Nissan decided not to drag behind and use this technology too –all future models will be coming with autonomous driving feature and brand-new Leafs too.

Prototype vehicles with Nissan's most advanced autonomous-drive technologies prowl the public streets of Japan, and one will soon begin testing on U.S. streets.

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A few words from Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn

Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn thinks that electric vehicles and hybrids will be dominating on the automotive market, but this process will take a while.

Automakers that sell gasoline-powered vehicles don’t want to lose their slice of the pie as well as companies that sell gasoline (revenue of companies like British Petroleum is immeasurable).

They do everything in their forces to hold leading positions on the market and put spokes in wheels of companies like Nissan, Tesla Motors, BMW and some others.

For instance, Nissan's U.S. dealers sold just 14,868 Leafs this year through October – a decline of 39 percent from a year earlier– and everything is due to cheap gasoline.

However, Ghosn mentioned that it’s temporary and industry shift to electrification is inevitable:

“I don't think anybody envisions today a future without the electrification of cars. Zero-emission cars will grow because restrictions on emissions are going to get tougher and tougher. So we have to continue our continuous improvement on the present technology and improve our technology."

"The price of gasoline is going to be either head wind or tail wind for us. It will slow you down or accelerate you. But it's not going to change the direction of where we're going."

Production

The prototypes of all-new Leaf models are ready, so now the Japanese manufacturer just needs to prepare for production.

However, everything is not as simple as that. The Japanese company is still working on lighter materials (CFRP, like in the BMW i3), better aerodynamics, autonomous drive, wireless charging and a lot of other things, hence, it’s a long shot – don’t expect the vehicle coming next week.

We reckon that it will take at least 3 more months to launch the vehicle into production.

Expect to see the production-ready version of the car around that time.